


alfirin; or, a tale of everlasting flowers

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: (just - Angband was a Bad Time for Gwindor), (not between characters named here!), (with a Silmarillion twist), Canon Disabled Character, Character Undeath, F/M, Guilt, Hanahaki Disease, Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Laws and Customs Among the Eldar, Legends, M/M, Origin Myths, Possibly Pre-Slash, Possibly Unrequited Love, Some internalized ableism, Storytelling, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt, Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2020, Undeath, Unreliable Narrator, Unrequited Love, hanahaki, ok buckle up here we go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:33:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26203504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: Some of the oldest legends of Beleriand warn of a flower that takes root in the hearts of the most ardent lovers. There it drives its seed, and plants its roots, and threatens the lover's life - or even takes it - if they cannot win their beloved.Gwindor has heard the tales, but he never thought he might see the truth of them himself, and certainly not like this.[a very Silmarillion sort of take on thehanahakitrope]
Relationships: Beleg Cúthalion & Túrin Turambar, Beleg Cúthalion/Túrin Turambar (implied/background), Finduilas Faelivrin & Gwindor, Gwindor & Túrin Turambar, Gwindor/Túrin Turambar
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23
Collections: Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2020





	alfirin; or, a tale of everlasting flowers

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by ["Hollowed"](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/676678) by zelvuska. 



> **alfirin** _(Sindarin, noun/adjective)_ flower, not dying, immortal, immortal, (lit.) not dying, species of flower [via Elfdict]
> 
> Helloooo! This is my humble offering for the Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2020. Thank you to Zelvuska/meesha-art on Tumblr, who created the amazing piece of art that inspired this: https://meesha-art.tumblr.com/image/627910980846993408
> 
> This fic is also my take on [hanahaki](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Hanahaki_Disease), a really neat trope I had wanted to try for a long time before Zelvuska's art gave me the push I needed to actually do it! Only, make it mythic and make it Silm because that's how I roll. . . 
> 
> Some story notes! This version of Beleg draws from one of my favorite fanons for him (not sure who to credit this to!), which is that he was not of the Sindar, but instead one of the elves who woke at Cuiviénen. There are also a couple of other twists to Silm tales we all know and love. 
> 
> Then, re: the tags on _unreliable narrator, survivor's guilt, implied noncon, disability_ — Gwindor, our main storyteller, has Been Through Things during his captivity under Morgoth and so sometimes he thinks of his own body and experiences in ways that are not healthy, flattering, or cognizant that things were not his fault. Just to mention this in case these are things that some folks wanted more information on or would rather not read!
> 
> Anyway. Hope you enjoy!

The night is dark, and close, and still—too dark, too close, too still, even for such nights as must fall in the wake of fell deeds, when the land has drunk of blameless blood. 

The night is dark, and close, and still, and somehow Gwindor knows, at once, that he and the killer he accompanies are no longer alone.

There is no change in the muted sounds of the forest about them—no sudden hush, no hasty fall of stillness—that would warn of such a thing. But then again, there never is: nothing less than their own annihilation would keep the insects from their night-songs, and the fox at hunt is wiser than to let even an Elda catch sight or sound of her.

And yet. Túrin Turambar may sleep deep as the dead, but Gwindor will not sleep again until he joins those lucky ones: he has only just shaken loose the chains of Angband, and no slave of the Iron Mountains lives for long without developing a sense for being watched. So Gwindor is roused from his uneasy rest by a prickle in the soft, short hairs at the nape of his neck; cautiously, he directs his eyes outward, into the world, from where they had been turned inward, into himself.

The cause of his unease is visible immediately. It is not even attempting to hide itself as it stumbles upon their camp.

 _Alfirin_.

For all his time upon the battlefield, and in the depths of the iron Mountain's mines, and beneath the cover of this thrice-cursed thorn-stricken forest, never has Gwindor laid eye upon one of those taken by their flowers. Such pitiable, fate-stricken souls are surpassing rare, and he, as many others do, had thought them tales to frighten children into observing the Laws and Customs of the Eldar, lest their lustful eyes and feverish minds tempt their flesh open far enough for such dangerous seeds to take root.

 _Alfirin_.

But there is nothing else that this creature that stands beside their rough campground now can _be_.

It stands upon two legs, and cloth is draped about its form in ways that obscure those parts of the incarnate body that polite society seems to find distasteful when exposed. Gwindor even thinks for a moment that this cloth is of a familiar cut and color, though dirtier now than when he'd seen it last, sticky and stiffening with blood and disappearing fast beneath the dirt of a quick-dug grave. . . A mane of dirty hoar-frost hangs limp before its eyes, and if Gwindor cared to look more closely, he imagines that he would indeed find eyes, a nose, slim ears, behind the unkempt curtain of it.

And from its chest there blooms a flower, sickly pink and soft with wet. Unassuming even in scent—for there is no reek of blood, or rot, or a longing so strong that it has nurtured vivacity even in death—that flower peeks forth through festering flesh and unclean cloth, from the wreckage of a wound to the heart.

Half those ruins, no doubt, are the doing of Anglachel—for all intents and purposes, Túrin Turambar's sword now. But the rest are surely the doing of Túrin Turambar's own unseeing eyes and embittered spirit, unable to see the gift he had been offered, and yet, more than able to spurn that gift all the same.

And so it must have been, Gwindor sees, that a seed sprouted within Beleg Cúthalion. A seed that would only take root when his love was not returned; a flower whose roots drove themselves into his heart like stakes, whose buds no doubt forced themselves up into his lungs, his throat, his mouth. . .

But Beleg Cúthalion now is dead, and the flower that would have killed him had his lover not, yet lives. Lives, but also grieves, and hungers. Thirsts.

And so it is not Beleg Cúthalion, Gwindor knows, this thing that has dragged itself from Beleg Cúthalion's grave to follow the man who must have been the love of Beleg Cúthalion's long, long life. No—Beleg Cúthalion is dead of a cursed sword thrust right through his faithful heart, and it is not truly he who now stands beside the sleeping form of the man who wielded that sword to such fell ends. It is only the _Alfirin_ , that pale cold fate-flower that can take an Elda's body captive and their soul entire, and it is only the _Alfirin_ that now forces the body of Beleg Cúthalion into a crouch beside Túrin Turambar, reaching out a thorn-clawed hand to linger at his face and stroke his fevered cheek. . .

Gwindor forces himself upright. "He-"

The flower forces Beleg Cúthalion's head up, as if regarding the one who would interrupt its claim. 

And at first the words simply will not come to him. For who is Gwindor, a simple bystander in this sad history, to tell an _Alfirin_ that it may not have the one it bloomed for, the one it desires, the one that it dragged its host's body back from the grave to reclaim? And Gwindor did not know Beleg Cúthalion well—in those few nights and fewer days that they had traveled together, the Firstborn had not spoken much, and when he had, it had been largely of the man he was traveling to find, an Adan whose name alone brought a smile to his craggy face and a soft, soft light to his old, old eyes.

Perhaps, Gwindor thinks, the Elda who was Beleg Cúthalion would not have minded if his _fëa_ had been ensnared in the roots of a cancerous flower, to nourish it until it could claim its beloved object and unable to make its way East or West as the spirits of the Firstborn seemed wont to do. Perhaps the Elda who was Beleg Cúthalion would have found it fitting that in death, as in life, his body was drawn to Túrin Turambar's side, no matter how his reason might have objected to the urge.

But Gwindor cannot be _sure_ of this, and Cúthalion had been kind to him, an escaped thrall of the Empty One, when no such kindness could have been expected of him, so far from civilized eyes. Without witnesses about, anyone else would have run Gwindor through for the crime of still breathing, but Beleg Cúthalion had smiled at him, had said that Gwindor might stay with him for safety's sake while the Firstborn sought out a friend of his heart.

In memory of Beleg Cúthalion, then, Gwindor musters up the words as best he can.

"He is not yours," Gwindor tells the _Alfirin_ that stands watching over Túrin Turambar with Beleg Cúthalion's eyes and the proof of Beleg Cúthalion's love for the Man blooming from its flesh and blood and bone. "He yet lives; let him be!"

Distracted from its prey, the _Alfirin_ cocks Beleg Cúthalion's head first left, then right, in a movement that Gwindor had seen the Firstborn indulge in when interested or amused despite himself.

Shaking, Gwindor stands, and shaking, draws his knife—a hunting blade, his only weapon, gifted him by his late traveling companion when he saw that Gwindor had none of his own. And seeing it now, the slack, cold muscles of Beleg Cúthalion's dead face are pulled into something that somewhat resembles a smile.

Unsteadily, Gwindor raises the knife to the level of its eyes.

"Turambar is but a Man," he tells the flower that has bloomed from Beleg Cúthalion's chest. "He will die, eventually—you know this. Wait for him til then, and then you may have his heart!"

In truth, Gwindor knows nothing of Men; in the dark North, their kind never even lived long enough to be dragged into the mines of the Iron Mountains. And Gwindor knows not, either, whether the not-dead flower will be willing to wait for the death of its love if it cannot cause that death itself, reaching into its beloved's chest to claim the heart it was denied in life.

Beleg Cúthalion's knife trembles in Gwindor's hand, an unsteadiness that stems only in part from the shakes Gwindor contracted deep in Morgoth's dark, terrible mines.

And yet—with one last caress to Túrin Turambar's quiescent face, the _Alfirin_ steps back. Withdraws. Fades back into the forest from which it had come, as quiet as it had come.

Somehow Gwindor resists the urge to sink Beleg Cuthalion's knife into something _, anything,_ to counteract the shaking. And he does not attempt to rest again that night.

_________

Arda was corrupted, once. Morgoth fused Himself with her, let His being drip into her waterways and ooze into her soil and evaporate into her airs. Perhaps it was in part of jealousy that He could never reach Arien of the Sun in these same ways; perhaps He had His own inscrutable reasons for craving incarnation, some true and inescapable material form. But whyever he did it, this was not the victory that He seemed to think it was, nor also the loss that so many since have depicted it as. For there were—there _are_ —yet many strange and awful things that crawled, and skulked, and bloomed amidst the fumes of Arda that even Morgoth certainly had no hand at all in making: ai, not even when He lost Himself to the earth in ways that none of His brethren have, either before or since.

And among such strange and awful things, it is said there was a flower.

 _Alfirin_ , the Sindar termed this bloom. _Alfirin_ , pale-and-cold-and-never-dying—or so the Sindar said when they deigned to give mocking tongue to anything they ever learned of the Avari, _barbarians_ _who rolled themselves in mud and spoke with wolves as if wolves had speech and believed in magic flowers that could hold off death if only you just loved someone hard enough!_

 _Ninquilótë_ , the Noldor termed this flower. _Ninquilótë_ , pallid-and-chill-and-everlasting—or so the Noldor said, not because they believed in the strange tales told by Sindar soldiers gone blind and half-mad with potent Noldorin drink—hardly not!—but rather because no concept in all of creation should go unnamed and undocumented while a Noldo scholar remained alive to name and document it. Truly, though, even upon the strange and wondrous shores of Beleriand, there could be nothing so improbable as a flower that took root in the hearts of the most ardent lovers, that when left unkept and unquiet could bloom in the chest and choke one to death and puppet their _hröa_ about while keeping the _fëa_ captive in its roots until together they had claimed their beloved's heart so that both could die together. . .

And if the Avari, those soft-footed folk of the sunless forests in the depths of the East, had their own name for such a thing. . . Well. If they had, then it had never passed their thistledown-tongues, their bark-rough lips, their wolf-sharp teeth. Had never made its way from their fireside songs into the ponderous tales of the Sindar who would style themselves their kings, and certainly not into the ponderous scrolls of the Noldor who would style themselves their saviors. After all, should one's so-called lords prove themselves incapable of managing even the name _Kwendî_ , should prove themselves unable to even think of a people as _Speakers_ but instead insist they were _Unwilling_. . . well. Then who is to say how else such strong-and-learned-and-mighty ones would treat other names, and the power that such names and the knowledge of them hold?

And if the Firstborn who woke at Cuiviénen before even the Avari had knowledge of such things as the _Alfirin_ —

Well. Then Beleg Cúthalion had always smiled, and chuffed his usual quiet half-laugh, and passed the drink along without touching it, leaving the talk around him to go on as if he'd never spoken, for indeed he never had.

And thus the _Alfirin_ —that pale cold never-dying flower that was said to take seed in one's heart and to feed off the love that it found there when that love could not be given away to be planted in the soil of its choosing—had passed away into legend and from there into myth, simply another oddity in the annals of Beleriand.

It is too bad, then, that myth has a habit of planting its own roots in the world. And of course, the deepest of roots will not be withered by frost, or drought, or the short, fleeting memories of incarnate creatures. 

_________

Knowing now that an _Alfirin_ dogs their steps, Gwindor seeks to speed their flight to safety. If they can reach Nargothrond, of old his home, then surely the City of Caverns will shelter Turambar, as the kingdom of Finrod Felagund has always done for those shaken souls who find their way to her carven doorstep.

But Turambar is wan, and shakes, and hardly stands; by day, he will not walk with Gwindor, and by night he will not rest with him, and so Gwindor struggles to herd him along as one might an obstinate cat. Anglachel, Turambar has wrapped in Cúthalion's torn and blood-soiled cloak, and he clutches that dark blade to his breast as if it were a child, whispering soft words to her that Gwindor does not wish to hear. And he will not eat, nor drink, of his own will, but only takes what Gwindor can force past his lips; his eyes burn with a wild light like fever, but his brow is cold, cold, cold, and perhaps it is true that Gwindor knows little of Men but these signs are plain enough that he can see how the burden of Turambar's life is his to carry, now. And if he does not—

Well, if he does not, then no doubt the thing that follows them, wearing Beleg Cúthalion's flesh and walking with Beleg Cúthalion's bones, would relish relieving Gwindor of this burden. Would relish taking Túrin Turambar's heart and his life in its sharp, thorn-tipped claws, claiming them as its just due. 

So Gwindor knows: if Turambar is to live, then he must not leave Gwindor's sight. And if the Man is to _continue_ living, as Beleg Cúthalion would have undoubtedly wished for him, then he must _desire_ life.

But Gwindor is still so new to such desire himself that he knows not how to solicit it in others.

"Tell me something of yourself," he prompts Turambar when next the Man falls, weak without water but unwilling to drink.

Turambar glares at him for his pains. And in the Man's arms, Anglachel hums, a sound without source that Gwindor can discern.

"What is there to tell of me?" Turambar rasps. "My life and my line are cursed, orc-thrall, and you would do better to leave me to my ruin, for doom will stalk me to my death!"

If by this he means to be portentous, then the dry cough that follows it rather ruins the effect. And if not for Cúthalion's kindness to him, Gwindor thinks sourly as he pinches the Man's nose shut until he can get the waterskin between his teeth, then he would be sorely tempted to leave Túrin Turambar to his overblown mutterings.

Doom stalks him, indeed. If only Turambar knew.

But if Turambar will not speak of himself, the favored subject of all Men, then he must be enticed to life in some other way. What else motivates all men? What else, all Men?

Ah.

 _This_ answer, Gwindor knows. Has learned it, hard and thoroughly, in the depths of the Iron Mountains, where rations were scarce and all that most thralls could offer their gaolers in trade for more was themselves.

But when he makes this familiar overture, Turambar turns away.

"You mock me," Turambar mutters, averting his eyes. And whether it is revulsion in his voice, or perhaps pity, Gwindor cannot say: his ears burn to hear it, all the same. So many things were lost in the mines. 

"I meant no mockery of you," he says instead, drawing his cloak close about himself once more with a shudder, half of shame and half of fear. 

So he has lost even his little desirability, then. That does not bode well for his return to civilization, where he is no longer fit for any other work or station.

"If not mockery, then what?" Turambar demands, and despite everything it is the liveliest that he has sounded since –

Well. Since he drew Anglachel, who now lies quiet too, from Cúthalion's heart not three nights ago.

Gwindor shudders again.

"As a diversion," he tells the Man, helpless to explain it any better.

Turambar squints at him for that, but at least now he is _looking_. "How would bedding _you_ distract me from my grief at accidentally slaying my closest companion?"

With a groan, Gwindor holds his face in the one hand that remains to him. "Please, do not—I beg you, do not ask me like that. Forget I offered anything."

He realizes, wildly and far too late, that no legend tells whether the _Alfirin_ will kill the one who lies with its chosen prey. And he realizes, more wildly still, that he no longer cares if the creature that follows them _does_ seek his life, for Turambar _is still speaking_.

"It's not that bedding doesn't have its appeal, I just don't-"

"Turambar. _Please_. For love of all the stars, no more."

"-feels like there should be more, I suppose," Turambar finishes, tapping at Anglachel absently. Gwindor can hear the dark blade thrum beneath his touch. "Do you not think so, orc-thrall?"

 _I have a name_ , Gwindor could tell him. _I am more than some small character in your misbegotten tale of love, your guard and guide until the one who loved you kills us both._

 _"_ I suppose," he tells the Man instead, unwilling to break whatever spell is leaving Turambar energized, and instead pulling him to his feet so they can continue walking. Anything to get them to Nargothrond. Anything to be away from the woods, and the thorns, and Beleg Cúthalion's dead, watchful eyes, even if it also means returning to civilization, where Gwindor fears that he no longer knows how to earn his way.

 _What good to anyone is a maimed prince_ , he wonders. _What good to anyone, an Elda form that has lost its splendor?_

"What is it like?" Turambar wants to know.

 _I no longer know_ , Gwindor could tell him. _I was betrothed, once, but that was many years ago, and if we played together betimes, she and I, then it was because we had known each long before either of us understood what betrothal was meant to be._

"I do not think my betrothed will like what has become of me," he says instead, and although it is not truly an answer Turambar hums, thoughtful, and presses him no more. And when Gwindor mutely offers again, the next day—in desperation, he tells himself: desperation, and nothing more—this time Turambar does not look away from his losses and infirmities, only nods and pulls him closer. His hands are hard, and hot, and stronger than Gwindor's one. 

Gwindor sleeps that night, for the first time since he can remember since he was first brought unto the Iron Mountains, and when he wakes, he is somewhat surprised to find they both yet live. Turambar, a little livelier now, traces Anglachel through the strange tracks that cross their camp and speculates about what might have left such prints without waking two former soldiers, but that is all. The _Alfirin_ that wears Beleg Cúthalion's body has left no other trace than these: these, and the mark of Beleg Cúthalion's nails, traced just deep enough to bruise, all down the side of Gwindor's aching throat. 

_________

As beginnings go, "once upon a time" is quite a decent start. With just four simple words, it manages to promise that time has elapsed, and people have learned from the error of their ways, and the world itself has grown better since.

What a fine way of commencing a tale whose lessons people do not care to hear!

_Once upon a time, a princess of the Eldar loved a man of the Edain. She danced for him and wept for him and pursued him past all heeding or reason, and her father's people in old Doriath whispered that perhaps she had been seized by the Alfirin, a strange sharp seed taken root in her heart that would blossom and choke her unless she could claim her love. And when the man of the Edain did come to her, yield to her, the whispers went on, wondering whether the Alfirin in their wild princess's heart had been satisfied with a man who was not of her own people, who could not have know the dangers that she had surmounted for his sake. But then the man of the Edain died, and the princess followed him into Death's realm and reclaimed him for her own, and there the whispers stopped, for the Alfirin could only halt death and prolong it, not reverse it altogether, and this should have been impossible. But the princess and her Adan lover lived happily ever after—or at least until they died again, for good and true this time, and such love as they bore each other: its like will not be seen again. The end._

As stories go, it is not bad, is it? Only now imagine if this were not simply a story: only imagine if there were a seed of truth to it. Where might that seed lie rooted?

Let us begin again.

Once upon a time, a king of the Eldar strayed deep into the woods, and he was lost to his people for centuries upon centuries. The faithful among them stayed and continued seeking their lost ruler, but the rest erected a new king and followed him beyond the Sea, in search of more dazzling gods when the stars above no longer shone bright enough to satisfy them. But eventually that lost king of the Eldar emerged from the forest, clutching by the hand a woman with vine-strong hair and seed-black eyes, and together they raised the first kingdom, the oldest one, in all Beleriand. And of the new queen's carpel, in later years, there came a babe: the princess of our other tale, in fact!

So many pointed to Lúthien's father and wondered if she took her strength of love from him: after all, Elu Thingol had lost himself for years uncounted, in happy thrall to his love for Melian Vine-queen. And yet, when Elu Thingol's spirit was rent from his body in death, Menegroth was engulfed, and the forests of Doriath became ever more hostile of strangers: only when Melian Vine-queen departed Beleriand could the kingdom's foes break through at all. But still, Fëanor's sons lost three of their number to a foe they should have easily overwhelmed, and Dior Eluchil's heirs were never seen again after they had been left alone in those dark woods. 

Once upon a time, indeed. If only the ruined places of Doriath were half so hospitable as the stories they have left behind!

The end. The end.

_________

When at least the fugitives reach Nargothrond, the City of Caverns is no longer the home that Gwindor remembers.

For one thing Findaráto, her founder and king, is gone, as is his Avari shadow Edrahil. Dead, the whispers say, when Gwindor can coax them out at all: _dead, gone, slain in a dank dungeon somewhere in the wreckage of Tol Sirion and their bodies left to rot in stagnant pools, years and years and years ago_. . .

These whispers are cruel, then solemn, then vicious, by turns. _A blessing, probably, that our king finally indulged in something with his savage man, can you just imagine the mess an unrequited love from that one would have left. . ._

Gwindor thinks of Túrin's first refusal of him, and draws his cloak tighter about his misshapen form, shivering as he has not done in some weeks.

But it is more than her kingship that has changed in Nargothrond. Orodreth, once brother of the king who would reign forever, is now king himself, and haggard with it; Guilin, Gwindor's own father, starts back in shock when he first sees his only remaining son, left maimed and limping from his inglorious servitude in the Iron Mountains rather than remaining safely, heroically dead upon the killing fields of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad.

And everywhere, everywhere, the whispers course on: _infirm, impotent, who is the Man, why won't he speak, what is that blade, who has become of the proud Prince Gwindor of Nargothrond. . ._

Finduilas, princess of Nargothrond and once Gwindor's playmate, then his betrothed, is the only constant. She alone does not shrink from the changes that warfare and bondage and ill use have wrought upon him; she alone smiles at Gwindor, and presses her shoulder to his in camaraderie, and speaks to him as she always has without her eyes falling to his missing limb or twisted form or shaking hands. It is not pity or even mercy, but simply Finduilas as she has always been.

In this she reminds him of Beleg Cúthalion, Gwindor thinks. Perhaps then it should not surprise him that the princess of Nargothrond takes after Beleg Cúthalion in other ways, as her eyes follow Túrin Turambar's striding form first with speculation and then with softness. . .

He is not jealous of her attention, and he does not begrudge it for himself: they were betrothed once, yes, but Gwindor does not fault their fathers for having broken that engagement when he was deemed dead in the aftermath of battle, or for not renewing it now that he has returned, alive but not unbroken. But loving Túrin Turambar comes with complications, and Finduilas, Gwindor thinks, deserves to know this.

And so he tells her—her, and no one else—of that which stalks Túrin Turambar. Of that which Gwindor, in his rashness and his ignorance and ai, his _fear_ , had promised Túrin Turambar to when finally, or ever, the Man does die.

Finduilas cannot quite fathom such a thing, and asks if after all this time he has finally become jealous, and so he leads her outside Nargothrond's walls to see it for herself.

He knows it will be there. Awaiting, if not him, then Túrin Turambar.

"Oh," Finduilas breathes, when Gwindor points his ever-shaking hand toward the _Alfirin_ , curled peacefully in upon itself in a grove some ways beyond the city walls. "I should not have doubted you, old friend, as strange as your tales might sound."

"I do not blame you, Faelivrin," he promises her, quiet. "If I had not seen it with my own eyes-" — _if I had not threatened it with my own knife, had not borne the marks of its hand upon my own throat_ — "-then I would not have believed any tales of it either."

"What does it mean for him?" Finduilas asks, her curiosity evident. "For Thurin?"

Gwindor shakes his head at her name for the Man: _Secret One, No-Name_. Turambar is a fool if he thinks he can keep his name and his doom secret from an entire city forever. So.

"His name is Túrin," he tells her, finally. "Túrin Turambar. Or, as he was known once, the Dragon-helm."

Her eyes widen, slightly, and her lips press together. She knows something of the name, then.

"And that?" she asks, nodding at the _Alfirin_.

"Strongbow to his dragon-helm," Gwindor whispers. "In life, that was Beleg Cúthalion."

"Ah," Finduilas says, and nothing more. It is the first true mark of how time has changed his old playmate, his once-betrothed, Gwindor thinks: the princess looks a little older, a little more weary, as she realizes how much love Túrin Turambar is able to overlook. 

This is the least he can do, Gwindor thinks: the courtesy of not putting Finduilas's new realization into words.

"And, I fear, a taste of what will become of Nargothrond if your father accedes to Agarwaen's counsel that we erect a bridge across the Narog," Gwindor says instead. "He would be exposing the city's heart to all Beleriand, and to anything there that might desire it."

Finduilas nods—once, grim. "I will speak to Father and advocate against the bridge," she promises. But her eyes never leave the _Alfirin_.

It has changed, considerably, in the year and more since Gwindor last beheld it. A bark-rough, bark-brown carapace is developing across its surface as if to contain all that lies beneath, which otherwise must rot away, and the cloth it once wore has long since decayed. Little of Beleg Cúthalion's flesh, once sunless pale, now remains to cloak the bone: what still endures, now teems with growth, fungus dripping from an eye-socket like tears and threading its tufted course across the _Alfirin's_ gaunt frame. And the organ it retains to see them by is not Beleg Cúthalion's left eye, nor ever was, but something dull, and red, and watchful. Waiting.

Not for them, though. For Túrin Turambar.

Seeing this, just one more potent example of the wreckage that Túrin Turambar leaves in his wake, Gwindor feels compelled to tell her. To reassure Finduilas that she is not missing much if Túrin Turambar never looks her way; to preserve her, even, from ever falling so far as Beleg Cúthalion must have, once upon a time.

"I tumbled with him, before," Gwindor blurts out. And when Finduilas looks to him with one brow raised, he realizes how that must sound, hastens to clarify: "Turambar, I mean, not Cúthalion. During our flight here, to Nargothrond—it was the only thing I could think of to get him moving again, he was in such a bad way, and I. So. Ah. I—I mean it, Faelivrin, when I promise you Turambar isn't worth it—it wasn't even good!"

As confessions go it is clumsy, and likely boorish, and very probably uncalled-for. Finduilas's right eye twitches, and then her mouth, and then she looks away from Gwindor, back to the _Alfirin_ , which has lowered its head again, as if realizing that neither of them is the one it desires and so it regards them as of no further interest at all.

"Ah," is all Finduilas says, after the silence has hung between them there for a long, long moment. "Well. I—that is not what I expected to hear from you, Gwindor, but I thank you for confiding it in me all the same. I think, though—well. I think that this which I possess, I feel, for Thurin—or Túrin Turambar, as you say he is truly named—is different, though. Tumbling the Man out of guilt, and because neither of you expected or cared to live another day after the fact—that is not love, Gwindor, and that is not what I hope for when I imagine speaking with him, and learning more of him, and even knowing a future in which we could grow old together."

She falls silent, then, and together they watch regard the silent _Alfirin_ do nothing, and say nothing, and be nothing. Gwindor wonders, somewhat wildly, if Finduilas's incomprehensible wishes are what Beleg Cúthalion had once desired of Túrin Turambar too, and his heart hangs heavy within him to realize that of the three of them, only he—who had never desired Turambar in that way—will ever be able to say that he has actually lain with the Man. He wonders, too, if Finduilas's love for Turambar will engender a seed within her too; if the Man will someday have not one, but _two_ , Eldar whose fate-flowers bloomed for love of him—a love he simply could not see.

And realizing this, Gwindor is silently, perhaps _traitorously_ , glad to think that it is better his own heart never harbored such a thing. There was no traitorous seed, no killing flower, that would have bloomed in his lungs and choked him to his death if Finduilas never returns the sentiments that he once bore her, for they were never this all-consuming thing that both Finduilas and Beleg Cúthalion have called love.

_________

But Gwindor dies, eventually. The bridge that he and Finduilas advocate against is built regardless, at Agarwaen's urging, and some years later the City of Caverns is brought to ruin by the dragon Glaurung, who sits perched upon that great structure that had made Nargothrond visible, much as its critics had warned that it would.

And Orodreth dies burning, and Gwindor dies screaming, and Finduilas is pinned to a tree by a spear, where she is still spitting her defiance as she dies.

And Túrin Turambar lives.

Túrin Turambar lives, heedless of the slaughter about him as his eyes are enchanted and his ears are bespelled, and he flees collapsing Nargothrond with a vision in his eyes, the promise that he will save his young sister and his old mother from the gloom of Morgoth's curse. But it is only a spell, and he wakes from it in Dor-lomin, many miles too far and many weeks too late: behind him, Nargothrond has long since fallen, and with her, all her people.

But Túrin's own tale turns on, with a marriage to a maiden and a new life in Brethil, and he even dares dream of a future free of war.

There are obstacles to this, of course. At times, his young bride will wail of figures she sees in the woods, but she is an excitable creature and Túrin pays her ramblings no mind: it is the moods that come of her recent quickening with child, he decides. He is a rational Man, and he need not lend credence to her whimperings of flowers, of bark and of bone, of fingers turned to thorns turned to claws. 

And still Túrin's own tale turns on, wheeling into a second match with Glaurung that this time proves fatal. Túrin's wife is his sister is his sister is his wife, and she is lost to the rocks and the river below long before Túrin ever even wakes from that poisonous dragon-sleep. But when he does –

Perhaps the heart of Túrin Turambar was never the right sort of ground to tempt the _Alfirin_ , that small sharp seed that would have lodged in his heart and flowered there if his greatest love was never returned. But that is not to say he was incapable of any love at all, and when he learns of Nienor Níniel's death, and how, and why—

Túrin Turambar flees. Into the night he runs, and he knows not where, or how, or from whence came Anglachel to hang at his side, until eventually he finds himself upon his knees before the gorge where his young bride, his young _sister_ , had last been seen alive.

There Túrin Turambar falls to his knees and cries.

He does not weep, for there is nothing so stately in the sounds that tear themselves from his throat; he does not sob, for there is nothing quite so selfless in the grief he now feels. No—for Nienor is dead by his fault, as are so many more before her, and Anglachel is whispering to him again as she has not done in years, and Túrin knows that he is truly alone now—that he is alone, and that he must die, and that he must die alone.

And so he cries.

There is a whisper in the air at his side, as if someone has come to kneel beside him. But when Túrin looks up from his hands, it is not _someone_ there: some fellow soul, Man or Eldar, come to dissuade a fellow sufferer from sating the dark blade at his side with his life. Instead, it is _something_ : bark-skinned, bone-thin, with fungus blooming where once perhaps were eyes and long slim thorns in place of fingers.

And a single flower, fat and full, furling from its chest.

Túrin cannot even find it in himself to be afraid: his heart within him has gone too numb for even fear. Anglachel at his side shrieks in wordless fury, as if sensing that she will be deprived of him, but Túrin pats at her sheath in wordless reassurance as he regards the thing knelt at his side, now reaching for him.

The thorns that tip its hands are sharp, but it wields them well: he feels only the softest pressure as it cuts through the cloth of his cloak, setting them against his skin.

Five sharp points; five slight pricks as they dig into his flesh, in a rough outline encircling his heart.

"Are you here to kill me?" Túrin Turambar wonders. He does not fear the answer this fiendish thing might give him; he is not even curious about it at all. He simply wishes to know how much more effort he must expend this day.

The flower in its chest seems to unfurl a little further, as if reaching for him, and the bark-rough skin of the thing's seems to curl into a small, shy smile as it shakes its head.

_No._

Its thorns are driven swift and deep.


End file.
